Mime
by DyingStar
Summary: Art was the only way he could really express himself. A major work in progress. Please read and review.


**A/N:** So...on J.K. Rowling's site, I stumbled across Dean's backstory, found it interesting, and wondered if I could make a story out of it. Here is my first attempt.

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**Mime**

_Chapter One_

Ever since he was a child, Dean was in love with drawing; he was fascinated with the colors. The way they appeared...they way they just _were_. He'd look at them for hours, upon his ceiling, until the sun died away. And even in the blue moonlight, he'd gaze and be in awe because the colors had changed, they had _evolved._

Although his mother disagreed, he remembered his father. Gabriel Thomas. The magnificent _artiste_, a good man. He father was like him and together they shared the love for the colors, even if it was only just them. It was Gabriel who had taught him about art and painting.

"Now this, son," said Gabriel to a two-year-old Dean. They were sitting in Gabriel's studio, or the attic, which was a very cold room with excellent lighting.

"This is a bit of ebony. I use this to make black paint." He held it out for Dean to hold and the small boy took it in his eager fingers. It felt very cool and very smooth in his ginger touch.

"Now," Gabriel spoke gently. "Put it here, in this bowl, and help me make the paint."

Dean obeyed as he timidly placed the piece of ebony into the small wooden bowl. Then he watched, with his two mismatched eyes, as his father added a funny smelling gooey substance in the bowl, along with the black rock.

"Now take this." He handed Dean a stone. Then he stood over his son and helped him mix the contents of the bowl together. It was hard work, especially for a small boy of two, but when they were finished, Dean could not help but laugh aloud his joy.

"Daddy, look!" he cried as he eyed the black paste.

"Yes, son, I see." Gabriel was smiling. "We made paint."

Dean always enjoyed spending time with his father. The colors they made together were the only highlights of his early childhood. And the painting was what made life _life_. But Josaphina Thomas didn't think so.

"Paint! That's all you do, Gabriel, is paint." She had exploded in on them in the attic one day. Dean had remembered. Her hair hadn't been in the usually neat braid and her gentle, brown eyes were fuming.

"Uh oh," Gabriel had muttered to Dean before he stood up to face his wife. Dean just stared between his parents, frightened.

"Now, baby-"

"Don't you 'baby' me, Gabe!" Josaphina yelled. "Don't you _dare_ 'baby' me!"

"Phina." Gabriel gave her a look of exasperated disappointment. "What've I done?"

The angry woman glanced at Dean before she crossed her arms and glared unmercifully at her husband.

"What have you done?" she repeated in a soft voice. Then louder, "We have a son to think about! How can you just waste your time, painting all day?"

"You talk as if I paint for pleasure," Gabriel said coldly.

"You _paint_ as if you do so for pleasure. Hallways, streets, windows! Gabriel, at least you can paint things people will actually buy!"

"Like portraits?" His voice held an eerie calmness.

"Exactly!"

"You know I don't do that, Jo."

"Well, you sure as hell should. Maybe we'll have some money for a change." With that, she left the attic, leaving the door ajar. Gabriel sighed as he went to close it.

"Never," he said as he returned to his wide-eyed son, "paint people, Dean. It takes a little out of you, as an artist, when you do."

Gabriel and Josaphina fought often, Dean remembered that too. They fought and they bickered and they spat. But always afterward, they'd hug and kiss and laugh. Josaphina loved Gabriel, if not his paintings, Dean knew, because that's why she took his sudden disappearance so hard.

To this very day, Dean can recall the hour his father left him and his mother alone. It wasn't raining and it wasn't at night. It was just cloudy and cold. And Gabriel Thomas, he just left. It was ten o'clock that night when Josaphina realized that he wasn't coming back.

After crying a thousand tears, she locked the attic. And after telling Dean that Gabriel was somewhere safe and warm, she tucked him in to bed and kissed him goodnight.

Dean never saw his father again.

Soon after that, Josaphina married again, a soft-faced clergyman with a generous salary. He was a man with a kind heart, who loved Josaphina and her quiet son. Dean hated him. He didn't paint, he didn't draw, he didn't love the colors. He was a bad man and as far as Dean saw it, he would never be his father. Josaphina, however, wouldn't have any of that.

"You be nice to Harold," she told him as she fixed their dinner. "He is a nice person and your new father, so you better be nice."

"No." Dean was stubborn.

Josaphina eyed him sadly. "Look, sweetheart, I know you miss Gabriel, so do I. But Gabriel is somewhere else now-"

"Well, when he coming back?" Dean interjected huffily.

"I don't know," Josaphina said honestly. "Just please be nice to Harold. Please."

Josafina didn't love Harold either. He may have been a nice man, but the magic stopped there. He had no character, no excitement. He was no Gabriel.

Within a year, Josaphina was impregnated, and Dean knew that Harold's stay was permanent. He also knew Gabriel wasn't coming back.

Dean stopped loving the colors after that. He stopped looking up at his ceiling before he went to sleep each night. It reminded him of Gabriel, a man who had gave him everything but himself. He then learned to like Harold and his children that were to come. Susanna, Lucas, Holiday, Iris, Gabrielle, Josaphina, and Harold were his family now.

Until they day the letter came.

Josaphina was beside herself; she had no idea what to make of it.

"A wizard?" She exclaimed as she clutched the letter in her trembling hands. "But how could you be...I mean, do witches and spells even exist?"

"Let me see, Mama," Dean took the letter and read it. With every word, a gentle, boyish smile grew upon his face.

"What does it say, Dee?" asked his little sister, Gabby.

"I'm going to school," her big brother said, grinning.

"But you already go to school," Luke said quietly. "With me."

"I'm going to learn magic!" Dean was ecstatic now.

"But how?" Josaphina asked softly as she watched her eldest son take her eldest daughter's, Susie, hand and dance around the kitchen. "How..." Then a somber thought came to her and she grew solemn. "Gabe," she said and she looked at Dean.

That night, Josaphina Cranewall reopened the attic, and she brought Dean with her. She made him stand by the door as she searched her late husband's paintings, the drawers in his old chipped desk, the dusty floorboards until she finally found what she wanted, hidden within the frame of a photograph. It was a letter.

"Does that one say I'm a wizard, too?" Dean asked.

"No, son," Josaphina replied gently. "It doesn't."

The next day, she took him to downtown London and from there, they went to a grungy-looking pub.

"The Leaky Cauldron," Dean read slowly with puzzlement. "What-"

Josaphina pulled him along before she could say another word. They entered the pub and were approached by a serious-looking man.

"Yes?" he asked shrewdly as he eyed the mother and son.

"Hello, sir," Dean's mother greeted in a nervous fashion.

"Hello," said Dean pleasantly.

The man turned his cold eyes on Dean, before looking at the mother.

"What do you want?"

"W-well," Josaphina started. "My name is Josaphina Cranewell-"

"We don't know any Cranewells," shouted a voice in the back. Josaphina tried not to look.

"But you know a-a Thomas, don't you?"

The pub grew still as many, many eyes strayed to the jumpy woman who stood with her tall son.

"Well, well, well," said the man who stood before the two as he looked again at Dean. "Well."

"I know a Thomas," spoke up a feminine voice near the front, and a petite woman with long wavy hair came forward. He eyes were on Dean as well, but there was small smile on her face.

"He was my brother."

"You're brother!" Josaphina exclaimed. "But Gabe never told me he had a sister. Or a family, at that."

"To protect you, I reckon." The woman turned her dark gray eyes on Josaphina. "You bein' his widow?"

"Yes," Josaphina said brusquely, pulling Dean closer.

The woman laughed. "No sense in being short with me, Missy. Or afraid at that." She looked at Dean. "And I reckon little Gabe sent you here?"

"He wrote me about it, yes." She studied the woman with caution. "Are you Astrid?"

"Why, yes!" the woman exclaimed. "That'll be me." She was laughing again.

Josaphina looked at Dean.

"Here let me take the boy," Astrid said, somber now. "Is he needing his Hogwarts things?"

"Yes."

"Well, I'll take care of him."

"But I thought-"

"Listen, woman, you don't know the ways and such of the wizarding world, and Dean will be needing his school supplies."

"But Gabe-"

"Would have liked me to take. I was big sister, you know. He trusted me."

"I didn't mean it like that," Josaphina spoke up, angrily.

"Oh, I know," Astrid smiled softly as she surveyed her brother's widow. "I know."

There was a pause.

"Well, what are you waiting for?"

"Give me a minute!" Josaphina shot back. She turned to Dean and lead him a little away from Astrid.

"Now Dean," she said, "your father was a special man, and these are...these are his people. That is his sister." She sighed. "Now there are things he told me in that letter that I never knew before, things I still don't understand. But you, you're special too, Dean. You're just like your father. You're exactly like Gabe."

Josaphina looked behind Dean just then, at Astrid and the man and the many eyes that were watching them.

"I want you to go with Astrid now. She knows, better than I , what's going on with you. But don't be afraid, Dean, because I sure am and one of us had to be brave one, all right?"

"Sure, Mum." Dean frowned at her. "Don't worry. I'll be fine." He looked back at Astrid, then returned his mismatched eyes on Josaphina. "I like her," he said quietly as he smiled.

Josaphina looked relieved, but she till didn't relax. She took a deep breath and turned to Astrid. "He's yours now...until five o'clock," she added. "Because five's supper. And-and make sure nothing bad happens to him. Keep him safe."

"Oy, lady," hollered a man somewhere deep in the pub. "You're talking to the wrong woman."

Josaphina looked stricken.

"'Ey, do us all a favor, Jude, and shut your arse up!" Astrid hollered back. She looked at Josaphina. "Don't mind him, or them. I'm safe."

"Yeah," Josaphina muttered. "I hope so. Go on, Dean. Go ahead with your aunt."

"Yes, Dean, come with me." She grinned. "It's to be great fun."

Dean took a couple of steps before he turned back to his mother.

"Thanks, Mum." He knew his mother somehow opened an important door in his life.

He went with Astrid, he followed her into the wizarding world, which Dean soon found out, was alive with the colors.

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**A/N:** Hmm...don't really know where this story is heading, maybe it'll be a romance, maybe it'll just be drama. I just thought I'd put it up here and see if I can get some feedback on what I've already written :) 


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